The War on All Fronts: England's Effort eBook

Some ten weeks have passed, and as these results have
become plain to all the world, the German lie, or
what remained of it, has begun to droop, even in the
country of its birth. “Do not let us suppose,”
says Captain Persius—­the most honest of
German naval critics, in a recent article—­“that
we have shaken the sea-power of England. That
would be foolishness.” While Mr. Balfour,
the most measured, the most veracious of men, speaking
only a few days ago to the representatives of the Dominion
Parliaments, who have been visiting England, says quietly—­“the
growth of our Navy, since the outbreak of war, which
has gone on, and which at this moment is still going
on, is something of which I do not believe the general
public has the slightest conception.”

For the general public has, indeed, but vague ideas
of what is happening day by day and week by week in
the great shipyards of the Clyde, the Tyne, and the
Mersey. But there, all the same, the workmen—­and
workwomen—­of Great Britain—­(for
women are taking an ever-increasing share in the lighter
tasks of naval engineering)—­are adding incessantly
to the sea-power of this country, acquiescing in a
Government control, a loosening of trade custom, a
dilution and simplification of skilled labour, which
could not have been dreamt of before the war.
At the same time they are meeting the appeal of Ministers
to give up or postpone the holidays they have so richly
earned, for the sake of their sons and brothers in
the trenches, with a dogged “aye, aye!”
in which there is a note of profound understanding,
of invincible and personal determination, but rarely
heard in the early days of the war.

III

So much for the Workshops and the Navy. Now before
I turn to the New Armies and the Somme offensive,
let us look for a moment at the present facts of British
War Finance. By April last, the date of my sixth
Letter, we had raised 2,380 millions sterling, for
the purposes of the war; we had lent 500 millions
to our Allies, and we were spending about 5 millions
a day on the war. According to a statement recently
made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (August 10),
by March next our debt will have risen to 3,440 millions
sterling, 1,060 millions more than it stood at in March
last; our advances to our Allies will have increased
to 800 millions, while our daily war expenditure remains
about the same.

Mr. McKenna’s tone in announcing these figures
was extraordinarily cheerful. “We have
every reason,” he said, amid the applause of
the House of Commons—­“to be proud
of the manner in which British credit has stood the
strain.” The truth is that by March next,
at the present rate of expenditure, our total indebtedness
(deducting the advances to our Allies) will almost
exactly equal “one year’s national income,”
i.e., the aggregate of the income of every person
in the country. But if a man having an income
of L5,000 a year, were to owe a total of L5,000, we